With a journey time ofseveral years , the trek to Jupiter is a recollective one , even longer than Mars , which can take up tonine calendar month . And when you arrive , search it is n’t much easier . Unlike Mars , wanderer are out of the question , as there ’s nothing for a rover to put down on ; the planet is notoriously made of tight - move streams of natural gas . Fortunately , this is n’t enough to stop scientists from thinking up ingenious ways of sending some sort of machine to go on Jupiter for a small while .
Robotics designers have been compiling their ideas about how to send a robot that measures properties of the Jovian air . These architect want to drive the limitation of floating robots – they do n’t want it to have wings or to depend on hot gas for buoyancy like a live melodic phrase balloon does .
The freshest idea at the import is theWindbot . The theoretical plan is to fling these bot into the Jovian atmosphere so that they can just curtsy there . They wo n’t fly around the surface , they ’ll just reverberate around in the atmosphere . The bot would stay aloft by using rotors to moderate its direction and lift .
Hovering in the atmosphere is no easy feat . The next stage is to image out how to take advantage of unusual energy source so that the Windbot can use them as a world power source and prolong its stay . Potential sources of energy would be the lead , temperature variations and maybe the satellite ’s charismatic field .
While there is currently no mission be after to send a golem into Jupiter ’s standard atmosphere ( although theJunospacecraft will orbit it next year ) , the researchers are hoping to extend their study to make these sort of gas giant projects feasible in the future .
retiring missions to Jupiter have included theGalileoorbiter that circled the throttle heavyweight for seven years until 2003 and even send away a probe into the planet . Unfortunately , the probe succumbed to the terrible heat energy and crushing imperativeness as it plunged deeper through the gas giant . At around78 minutesin , the probe unfreeze .
This investigation , unlike the proposed Windbots , had no shape of control once it was flung into the satellite . The Windbots will need to stay aloft in the air to ward off the same fortune .
If Windbots turn out to be affordable , then it would be wonderful to have them dotted all over Jupiter . This elbow room scientists could supervise gas flow and magnetic variation in the environment around Jupiter . If successful , these bots may even go and visit Saturn .
[ ViaNASA ]
